Saturday, August 08, 2015

Saturday Reads

Here is an interview with longtime feminist and academic Janice Raymond. She talks about a variety of subjects here.
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Anti-public ed groups are sponsoring a GOP "debate," which of course everybody will agree to the extremist policies pushed by both political parties.
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Obituary: Frances Oldham Kelsey, 101, the doctor who saved American babies from the drug thalidomide, a drug known to cause birth defects in children, has died:

Dr. Kelsey, who died on Friday at the age of 101, became a 20th-century American heroine for her role in the thalidomide case, celebrated not only for her vigilance, which spared the United States from widespread birth deformities, but also for giving rise to modern laws regulating pharmaceuticals.

She was hailed by citizens’ groups and awarded honorary degrees. Congress bestowed on her a medal for service to humanity and passed legislation requiring drug makers to prove that new products were safe and effective before marketing them. President John F. Kennedy signed the landmark law that she had inspired, and presented her with the nation’s highest federal civilian service award.

“Her exceptional judgment in evaluating a new drug for safety for human use has prevented a major tragedy of birth deformities in the United States,” Kennedy said at a White House ceremony.

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Donald Trump shot his mouth off again and gets a lot of criticism for it.

I heard him make that remark about Megyn Kelly on CNN, and I was frankly shocked he said something that filthy.
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The first Republican presidential debate of the 2016 campaign, held Thursday night at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, was a spectacle of such debasement and filth that it stands as a milestone in the degeneration of American capitalist politics.